Simply setting up social media accounts and posting whatever you want isn’t going to gain you a following. To be successful in spreading your brand, you have to ensure your social media campaign is effective and engage with your followers and influencers.

You can’t do it on your own, though. Here are five tools that can help.

1. SocMetrics

SocMetrics is a web-based influencer platform where users can identify and understand influencers and interact with them, as well as manage their campaigns. SocMetrics allows marketing professionals to make sure their social media campaigns are effective and based on industry influencers. It’s used by VitaCoco coconut water, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Ancestry.com.

Using this tool, marketers can build their brand by learning more about industry thought leaders and leveraging their social media content accordingly. Users can specify brands and detailed influencers with the “Competitive Influence” feature. In searching for influencers, you can also narrow your search to a long-tail keyword.

2. PostRank

Owned by Google Analytics, PostRank is a social engagement data aggregator. It allows marketers to analyze topics and trends related to their business through real-time data.

With PostRank, you can measure activity on more than 20 of the most-used social networking platforms. Determine the amount of influence you have had on each site and for each post or publisher, as well as measure performance and track interactions. View who has mentioned your brand, who is spreading your brand and what they are interested in. With this knowledge, you can more effectively engage with your leads and customers.

3. Commun.it

Commun.it, a leading Twitter community manager, allows businesses to build their brand by gaining more followers and making more connections. The tool is used by big names like Cisco, Sony, HP, Dell, Nike and Volkswagen.

It collects data on your up-to-date feed and categorizes your Twitter followers into influencers, top supports and engaged users. These lists can be sort influencers by highest algorithm to lowest. Based on these groups, companies can make connections and improve relationships with their followers. You can be sure to specifically connect with users who are influential, have shared your content or have engaged with you. Commun.it also offers a “Consider to Follow” feature that recommends users based on their previous posts.

4. HootSuite

HootSuite is a web-based platform and an application for iPad that allows marketers to manage their social media posts and engagement with their followers. It has more than 7 million users, including Pepsico, Sony Music, Virgin Mobile and CBS Interactive.

A stationary column in the sidebar allows users to keep track of all of their social media streams at once. You can analyze click-through metrics, check in to locations using Foursquare, add geo-location coordinates to posts, shorten URLs and queue content to be posted at a later date, among other features.

5. HubSpot Social Inbox

You can do just about anything with HubSpot Social Inbox, an especially great tool for B2B users. The tool’s analytics spans all other HubSpot tools, allowing insight into all of your brand’s interactions – the pages your followers visit and how often, whether or not they are a customer, etc.

This tool allows users to view their brand’s social activity in a variety of ways, including by customer or by lead. You can create and monitor streams, analyze effects on ROI and bottom-line, publish posts straight from the dashboard, queue posts and store social information when a lead converts. What makes HubSpot Social Index unique to other social media tools is that users have access to social media support from experts.

The very premise of social networking platforms is to engage and interact with others. Simply focusing on keywords and following strangers is short-sighted. To make the most of your social media campaigns, you must make the most of your connections.